Media Lab's Riley Crane on Colbert Report

Tuesday night saw what can only be described as the pinnacle Media Lab accomplishment in its history: a Lab researcher's appearance on the Colbert Report.

Ok, we kid. But the appearance was still great. Media Lab postdoctoral fellow Riley Crane spoke to Colbert about his winning idea for the DARPA "Red Balloon" Challenge---the idea being to successfully incentivize individual effort to reach a group goal, in this case, finding ten red balloons scattered across the country. Or as Crane put it, "aligning people's selfish interests with the goals of society at large."

Check out the interview video below. Our favorite part is Colbert's reaction just after the 4:00 mark when Crane says it took his ad hoc team just eight hours, fifty-two minutes to find all ten balloons.